That's bullshit. Giuliani and Trump have been effectively telling Mueller to fuck himself as far as answering any follow-up questions, but they call the Special Counsel's Office and get a statement put out denying the Buzzfeed article?

If it's true, it's bullshit because Mueller should have told Giuliani it's not his job to help an uncooperative subject of his investigation. If it's not true, it's bullshit because Giuliani is a bullshit artist.

"There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple; the smaller the mess, the easier it is for me to clean up." -Michael Clayton

"It was nice of the President's legal team to send something that @JasonLeopold can FOIA." I don't know any of the ins and outs of FOIA. Marcy is usually--in fact, nearly always--correct in her assertions. Why would trump's attorneys risk sending a document that can be FOIA'd?

"It was nice of the President's legal team to send something that @JasonLeopold can FOIA." I don't know any of the ins and outs of FOIA. Marcy is usually--in fact, nearly always--correct in her assertions. Why would trump's attorneys risk sending a document that can be FOIA'd?

I don't know that this document could be FOIA'd. I mean, he can ask, but I imagine the SCO would hold it at least until the investigation is over. I know that there are FOIA exemptions in place to protect pending investigations and personal privacy. So depending on what the document is, it might not be releasable, and my bet is that it probably is not.

"Hey! You know, we left this England place because it was bogus. So if we don't get some cool rules ourselves, pronto, we'll just be bogus too." - Thomas Jefferson

It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if this did happen. Trump has been a hateful asshole and a control freak his whole life, top that with all the power the presidency gives him and in his mind there is nothing that can stop him that he won’t be able to control one way or another. That would also explain Mueller’s rather cryptic response, he was probably just placating Trump until he can finish his report.

Apparently these reporters haven't heard of the pending investigations exception to FOIA.

"There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple; the smaller the mess, the easier it is for me to clean up." -Michael Clayton

Apparently these reporters haven't heard of the pending investigations exception to FOIA.

It sounded to me that the document they wanted was the one thatl the administration sent to me at Miller’s office asking for them to respond to the BuzzFeed article. While it’s asking for a response about an article about the pending investigation, rhe document is not part of the investigation itself. But if the document had information pertaining to the investigation, I would think that would mean that Mueller‘s office had unlawfully released information to a party that might be subject to the investigation.

If the letter was from Giuliani, which is what was suggested by Giuliani's statement as I read it, then no. Giuliani is not a member of the administration. Rudy Giuliani is Trump's personal attorney, not a White House Counsel. That makes any correspondence between Giuliani, as the personal attorney for a subject of an ongoing investigation, and Mueller's office squarely within the parameters of the pending investigations exception to FOIA.

If, on the other hand, the White House wrote a letter to Mueller's office asking them to deny a story, that would raise a whole other world of potential obstruction problems for Trump. The White House can't ask the Special Counsel's Office to kill a story, and doing so makes one wonder what else they would "request."

"There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple; the smaller the mess, the easier it is for me to clean up." -Michael Clayton

I'm really starting to worry about the public getting the impression that this is an investigation spinning out into too many things. I personally get how the whole picture may well fit together coherently, but I worry about the public losing patience and confidence.

It's too easy for Giuliani to spin this as saying "Oh, now they want to look at another area after 2 years of investigating..."

"There's no play here. There's no angle. There's no champagne room. I'm not a miracle worker, I'm a janitor. The math on this is simple; the smaller the mess, the easier it is for me to clean up." -Michael Clayton

I think it's a bad idea to generalize terms such as "public" and "Americans" and "the voters". While I don't buy into the "ooooh, the country is so polarized now, with awful radicals on either side making awful demands" line (because we are talking about ethics/rhetoric, not policy), it is clear that there are loud and active segments of the population out here that see the world quite differently. Hence Bizarro world.

45's "public" will think whatever they feel like. The three people left in the middle may be temporarily convinced by worst of the reportage into believing that Mueller is doing too much, but so what? Nothing is pristine in this world.

If the letter was from Giuliani, which is what was suggested by Giuliani's statement as I read it, then no. Giuliani is not a member of the administration. Rudy Giuliani is Trump's personal attorney, not a White House Counsel. That makes any correspondence between Giuliani, as the personal attorney for a subject of an ongoing investigation, and Mueller's office squarely within the parameters of the pending investigations exception to FOIA.

If, on the other hand, the White House wrote a letter to Mueller's office asking them to deny a story, that would raise a whole other world of potential obstruction problems for Trump. The White House can't ask the Special Counsel's Office to kill a story, and doing so makes one wonder what else they would "request."

for arguments sake, if Trump did ask Mueller to deny, would Mueller have to do it?

@ddale8
8m8 minutes ago
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BuzzFeed publishes what it says is the detailed letter of intent for the proposed Trump tower in Moscow, signed by Trump during the Republican primary and including lots of specific details Giuliani claimed yesterday do not exist.

Trump’s Lawyer Said There Were “No Plans” For Trump Tower Moscow. Here They Are.

The plan was dazzling: a glass skyscraper that would stretch higher than any other building in Europe, offering ultra-luxury residences and hotel rooms and bearing a famous name. Trump Tower Moscow, conceived as a partnership between Donald Trump’s company and a Russian real estate developer, looked likely to yield profits in excess of $300 million.

The tower was never built, but it has become a focal point of the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into Trump’s relationship with Russia in the lead-up to his presidency.

The president and his representatives have dismissed the project as little more than a notion — a rough plan led by Trump’s then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, and his associate Felix Sater, of which Trump and his family said they were only loosely aware as the election campaign gathered pace.

On Monday, his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said “the proposal was in the earliest stage,” and he went on to tell the New Yorker that “no plans were ever made. There were no drafts. Nothing in the file.”

However, hundreds of pages of business documents, emails, text messages, and architectural plans, obtained by BuzzFeed News over a year of reporting, tell a very different story. Trump Tower Moscow was a richly imagined vision of upscale splendor on the banks of the Moscow River.

A long-held dream

Trump had for 30 years tried to extend his real estate empire to Moscow. He even wrote about it in his book The Art of the Deal. But he never found the right opportunity — until 2013, when he visited Russia to host the Miss Universe pageant. “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next,” he tweeted after the event.

Paul Manafort's reply was due at 10am to materials that Mueller's office submitted last week re: evidence the govt says shows Manafort lied after pleading guilty. Nothing is on the docket, but for the past few filing deadlines lawyers have initially filed under seal

It's possible (and likely, given past practice) that Manafort's lawyers filed under seal, in which case we'll see an order from the court about that later (parties later made redacted versions public). Other scenarios are that they missed the deadline, or decided not to file